May determined to make it her deal or no deal. Corbyn has asked for No Confidence motion

Even if that's true (and I'll never buy a Guardian), its going to take awhile for genuine investigative reporters to return. I'd say our media is currently on a par with Russia. They attack the opposition as they want the status quo to be maintained. But let's not worry, the BBC have outsourced their complaints service. That'll sort it!

 

Labour's economic plan to bring jobs back to neglected areas and to address Climate Catastrophy

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/24/labour-government-tackle-climate-change

sounds like what we need.

 

If Jeremy Corbyn wants to have state support for industry then I'm afraid that the UK cannot be in a customs union with the EU - it'll be a Canada-style relationship at best which:

• Does not address the needs of the service sector which accounts for 80% of our economy
• Does not even begin to start to address the Irish/Northern Irish border status and the impact it will have on the Good Friday agreement

I appreciate that to you the EU seems like a far right institution but the reason why the far right wants to be free of the EU is that it perceives it to be a leftist organisation which is foisting all kinds of regulation on the UK including:

• Basic human rights such as allowing prisoners to vote
• Environmental and workers' protections which the Rees-Moggs of this world think stifle profitability
• Europe wide standards which mean that the UK has to produce goods to an acceptable level for domestic consumption
• Regulation of companies' behaviour - the right wants libertarian, dog-eat-dog capitalism

 

Sounds like you haven't learnt from the referendum. Folk like to belittle the leavers, suggesting that they must be flag waving little Englanders easily corrupted by a message on a bus. Pamela Anderson, god bless her, gets closer to the reality: "The Guardian, the metropolitan elites and the likes describe the EU as some sort of humanitarian charity that is a force of unquestionable good...". Its support for neoliberalism guarantees otherwise. It is just as much to blame as austerity itself for the rise of the right across Europe.

 

If that's what you want then you have to accept that it's incompatible with EU membership and membership of the EU customs union.

One of the reasons why the EU has such a downer on state support is that it unfairly tips the balance in favour or rich countries like the UK, Germany, Sweden and other countries which have sufficiently deep pockets to provide massive levels of support for domestic industry which means that poorer EU countries don't even get a look in. It's a form of economic imperialism, the UK heavily subisdises various industries which means that we can produce far more cheaply than the market rate which in turn means that we can "dump" products in other markets meaning that they cannot develop their own capacity to manufacture those same products.

The protectionist/isolationist message is a tempting one - which is why President Trump has also seized on it.

 

In my experience the majority of Leave voters are exactly as you describe them, harking back to a time when Britain was great and there weren't any darkies around.

No doubt there are many enlightened Leave voters like yourself, but to paint Nigel Farage as some kind of crusader against the forces of neoloberalism misses the mark by a considerable margin IMO - not least because the future he envisages is even redder in tooth and claw.

 

What a load of piffle! The idea of investment as protectionist is straight out of the Washington Consensus, itself guilty of destroying economic development opportunity. And to try and stop such appropriate behaviour in the UK, with a structural imbalance in the economy, merely confirms that being part of the EU is not in the interests of the working class.

 

Heavily subsidising an industry is indeed protectionist. That's not to say that it's always the wrong thing to do (IMO there really is a very strong case in the support of the development of renewable energy technologies) but it still makes home grown product cheaper and makes it harder for unsubsidised product to be competitive.

Regarding the highlighted. There may very well be some kind of post-Brexit situation which is in the interests of the working classes but IMO the versions of Brexit on offer are absolutely not in the interests of the working class.

 

First, it isn't. Protectionism necessarily harms economic activity (as shown by Heckscher-Ohlin). Subsidies are often a correct reaction to market failure. You've simply bought the false narrative of neoliberalism, just like Uncle Blair. Second, the EU does use subsidies (as shown by Airbus versus Boeing; not forgetting their long history of supporting land owners through CAP). It just stops using subsidies for the betterment of the working class.

 

Subsidies are protectionist, they skew the market in favour of those who are in receipt of them. To pretend that subsidies proposed by left wing politicians for the benefit of the working classes aren't protectionist is magical thinking. They may be desirable, they may be for the strategic benefit of the country but they are assuredly protectionist.

 

Again you ignore the reality of protectionism. It generates deadweight loss. We don't have that with subsidies. Traditionally we can refer to the infant industry hypothesis. However, that can be widened to refer to other aspects of market failure. Without subsidies, we can expect a neoliberal economy to the detriment of the public good.

You of course continue to ignore how the EU's origins are protectionist. Originally it was focused on protecting heavy industry to reduce the threat of further militarism. That soon shifted towards protecting land rent seekers. How many quid from the working classes have gone in the pocket of the Duke of Westminster? Greenpeace were kind enough to shown that 1 in 5 of the top 100 CAP recipients are on the Sunday Times rich list.

 

I seem to remember we used to help industries when need be and of course we bought a lot of them till Thatcher got rid of them, what Harold McMillan called 'selling the family silver.'

Now the sort of things which were the absolutely not allowed in those days were monopolies and especially with regard to the Press. We knew then what had led to fascism and world wars.

 

Well yes and no, we ended up with a lot of state owned monopolies - including the broadcast media.

Personally I find the idea that government ownership and operation of large parts of the economy is naturally a good thing as ridiculous as the counterpart, that the private sector is automatically the best at running something.

We have however now strayed a long way from the subject of the thread. Do you still think that Brexit is a bad idea and will hurt the UK or have you now revised your opinion ?

 

You can't help but allow your Blairism eek out...

 

Trying to make very different things appear the same. No surprise there.



National Monopolies are in no way similar to Global Monopolies. I can remember throughout my childhood hearing the adults around me freaking out about monopolies, and they were not talking about the health service. The word Monopoly had then much the same emotion on it then as the idea of the Government encouraging paedophiles would now. We did not allow monopolies to come into being. That changed with your hero Thatcher...and do not even say your hero is Blair because they are the same. Thatcher was the first person who Blair visited for advice. That was Labour giving up on its people and that is the reason why people from the base which Labour used to represent were vulnerable first of all to the BNP and then to an ethnic nationalist desire for Brexit and that will be the reason why England moves to the far right if it does. Thankfully Corbyn has offered people an alternative regardless of the work done by the Blairites in Labour to remove him and set us on the road for fascism.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/privatization

National Monopolies are nothing like Global Monopolies. Your false equivalence failed.


As far as trying to equate the BBC the first of what was to become many with the massive bias of our media toward the right, way beyond pathetic.

http://www.defenddemocracy.press/britain-the-election-the-media-and-the-anti-corbyn-bias/

You were the one who moved this thread way off topic and onto me a long time ago. I am not the subject of this thread. See forum rules.

My interest was to allow people to talk about how they were feeling about how Brexit was going at this time and how they thought it would progress bringing in new things as they arose. That is the subject Of the thread. You are the one who took it off topic way back. Besides of which I have already answered you asking me that question already.

I believe you have been basing most of your opinions on the right wing press. You should watch that film I brought in. There is no question that how it describes Global Capitalism is what we are experiencing now. There also is no question that fascism and Corporate Power go hand in hand and that as well is where we are now.

I notice we have exactly the same going on with today's 'far right' but Capitalism itself does not have a historic problem with fascism.

https://monthlyreview.org/2014/09/01/the-return-of-fascism-in-contemporary-capitalism/

Looks like the Stockmarket might be interesting on Thursday

Nikkei falls 5% as government shutdown in Washington spooks markets

 

You never made it clear you were talking about global monopolies...but if we are, there weren't steps to prevent them because there wasn't that level of international cooperation. Come to think of it, no global monopolies spring to mind.

Still -what about Brexit ? Yea or Nay ?

 

I was talking about Private Monopolies. I did not study economics and clearly State Industries do not cause the same problems. See my link.

How about the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. In Germany and Japan there was International work to try and stop them getting Monopolies as it was believed it was too easy to give them a couple of bob and get them to support Fascism. This would never happen with socialists though would it. Hence we see Sanders who many people believe would have beaten Trump not being able to stand and we see more fear among the Tories and Blairites for Corbyn gaining power than for Fascism in this country regardless of the reality that all he is suggesting doing is bringing in Social Democracy in a way fit for the world as it is now.

The big claim was that when our gas and electricity was sold from the public 'Monopoly' we would get it cheaper as they would all be in competition. In reality apart from the odd one they did what Corporations always do they formed a Cartel and fixed their prices.

Varoufakis said

He supports keeping the EU

How about these - this was in 2015
https://www.toptenz.net/10-companies-never-realized-monopolies.php

What I am talking about are Global Corporations who pay little or no tax.

Basically what we are living in now is post Capitalism. Capitalism always had the possibility of the Capitalist losing his gamble. That does still happen with the small business but not with those who are 'to big to let fail'. It changed after the 2008 crash There were other ways of resolving the crises. The banks could have reduced the amount of money people had to pay for their homes instead of making them homeless but they didn't. They were perfectly capable of taking responsibility for the debt themselves but neo liberalism Leaders noticed it was the rich who would lose and saw it as a way to get rid of even more public ownership with not those who caused the crash suffering but the ordinary citizen often with very little money resulting in many ordinary people suffering loss of home and for some left with not enough money to even eat. We have had a basic freeze on wages since. I do not remember food banks ever in the UK before 2008. In the States yes, but I had never heard of it here. The Treaty with the US which I think the EU did not sign had clauses in it to protect the Capitalists. This is no longer Capitalism. This is Corporate Power. It is the freedom of the Richest, who run our plutocracies to do what they like. Surprise, surprise those who are losing their jobs and homes having bailed out the bankers are somewhat unhappy and easy for the Fascists to pick up though the Tory Party itself could do the job with Mogg or Boris in charge.

We had Bannon organising schemes in Brazil to help Bolsonaro to get elected and now working to get the EU Parliament filled with fascists at the next election.
Now yes, the Tory Party will always take over from any ground root fascism in the UK but what the left of the Tories and Blairite Labour are doing is closing their eyes and not noticing that people all over the world, not just in Europe are saying **** you to centrist mainstream parties because they have not been providing for their needs. ..and it is going to get worse, much worse. The young nowadays are told that they should not expect as good a life as their parents had and their children cannot expect as good a life as they have ......and that is because Corporate Global Capitalism does what it always does, it moves to where it can find the cheapest workers. The belief is that eventually the standard of living in the UK if we carry on this way will be about half of what it is now. This is a very dangerous and in two different areas - one the potential for the rise in fascism and the second the very real possibility that our 'leaders' due to concern about the economy are not going to do what needs to be done if we are to leave a world for the young and those not yet born.

What is interesting about Post Capitalism is that there will not be that much work to do so people may for the first time have time to do the needs we were talking about in the 80's, time to spend with their children, for hobbies, for self development and for study. All this of course is dependant of a decent amount of money with which to live on.

As I said in my last post, I have already answer that. That remains.

Varoufakis and Corbyn met in Edinburgh during the festival. He did mention that Corbyn was supporting remain and that other than that the UK had the main remain leaders treating the population as infantile, thinking they would be unable to understand that there are good points and bad with the EU while the Brexiters were also treating the people as infantile making out the EU was Satanic. Varoufakis was apparently working with McDonald during the Brexit Campaign. Corbyn took the Middle Ground.

Corbyn said

That is basically the difference between Corbyn and the Blairites. He wants reform so that it serves the people and the Blairites are perfectly happy with it being a cartel for Big Business.

Varoufakis agreed with Corbyn that another Referendum would be not accepting the people's vote and agreed with Corbyn that a General Election would be a better idea. He didn't see any problem with Corbyn's intentions on how to progress with the EU but he felt the best would be to go for a Norway Plus and stay in it for 5 years or so and that that could be put to the people at a General Election.

Then near the end Varoufakis said

Varoufakis said that like Climate Change, Progressive Socialism needs to be International. They also spoke about how in the past the US has arranged coups against democratically elected socialists, like in Chili and Varoufakis in particular spoke about how they needed to support each other and could not rule out that there could be this kind of action.

Corbyn said the International Movement should not be personal about him but admitted he was in contact with Sanders and knew well the President of Mexico, who he would be visiting soon.

This was 3 months ago

As I expect you know that Movement has now been formed.

If you want to watch the Varoufakis/Corbyn interview check out 'Jeremy Corbyn with Varoufakis at the Edinburgh Book Festival August 20 2018' on YouTube

 

State monopolies can cause exactly the same problems as private ones, a market barred to new entrants by a monopoly can end up with a substandard product and/or service at an inflated price and it can prevent innovation.

It's still in operation, except it only operates on a national level - you were talking about global monopolies. The European Commission on the other hand has the capability to rule internationally and has done so repeatedly.

When, by whom ?

Barry Sanders was able to stand (and indeed did, but lost out in the primary). Two things counted against him considerably:

• He was, until very recently, an Independent and he was running against someone who had been a party fixture for decades
• His policies were too left wing and progressive for the party he was running for

Of course he could have stood as a third party "socialist" candidate but I doubt he would have made much headway.

You claim that there's a cartel but repeated investigations into the UK energy market shows that there is a lot of competition. Prices are pretty similar, that's true but because the underlying price component is an internationally traded commodity then that's going to tend to happen unless someone is going to sell at a coniderable loss.

Well let's look at them:

• Luxotica - actually a pretty good example but now being undermined by internet-based companies manufacturing glasses on demand
• Netflix - not even close - there is no shortage of streaming services
• Unilever - the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) industry is fiercely competitive. Unilever are only the fourth largest company in the sector behind Nestle, Proctor and Gamble and Pepsico - you can't have a monopoly if you're only the fourth largest player
• YKK - the article admits that there are many zip manufacturers "There are a lot of other zipper manufacturers in the world, most based in China, which are somewhat cheaper but much less reliable."
• Monsanto - nope, plenty of other agribusinesses out there
• Google - nope, plenty of other search engines out there
• Simmons Pet foods - nope it's not even in the top 10
• Facebook - nope, plenty of social media out there
• Microsoft - nope
• AB Inbev - nope SABMiller, Heineken and Carlsberg are just as big

A weak article IMO

None of which changes the fact that Jeremy Corbyn wants the UK out of the EU - do you agree ?

 

They don't but you are just being argumentative.

No it is not. It closed

I was indeed and I corrected that. The fact you need to repeat your old ploy illustrates your interest is just to be argumentative.

So now we get to your long time lack of knowledge of the dangers of Monopolies to Democracies, how the mention of one was deemed with horror in those days, just the mention that something could be a monopoly was enough to have it meticulously scrutinised. You appear to be completely ignorant of this and their collusion with Fascism.

Monopoly Laws began after WW1 and came to be called in the US antitrust laws

Got that yet? There threat to democracy was recognised.

Have you got yet a feeling of how I have been saying Monopolies were perceived in post WW2 Britain.

Now in respect to Germany and Japan which is what you are asking about and the belief that Monopoly's and Corporate Power could be bought to support Fascism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_competition_law

and that is what was once again let loose on our Democracies by Thatcher and Regan followed by Blair. It comes as no surprise, as those they were following did not think Democracy was a good thing and Blair complying with this when he was supposed to be securing Democracy for the United Kingdom as he had agreed to do with Smith before Smith's untimely death, knew exactly what he was doing as I have already left a quote about.

We no longer have democracies. They have quietly been replaced with Plutocracies. Now we are in serious danger of moving back to fascism. This you appear to support by your support for Monopolys and Corporate Power.

Who on earth is Barry Sanders? Are you meaning Bernie? With Bernie I was speaking about standing against Trump. Please do not change what I have said to mean something else.

Dear Democratic party: it's time to stop rigging the primaries

No he has a mixed past sometimes being Independent sometimes being Liberty Union and being a Republican as well in 2006. What I said was that he would probably have beaten Trump. I said this within the context that Blairites find the idea of fascism less threatening than that of Labour Party Heritage, social democracy.

That the Democratic Party is as bought as the Republicans is acknowledged. I hear that there is at least movement in them now towards the people. Without that it is going to be hard for the US to avoid fascism.

I never read it. I supplied you with what you said you had never seen.

I suggest you deal with his known position which was the one he argued prior to the vote.

 

sorry did not notice that massive error! A Democrat in 2006 not a Republican

 

This Brexit "thing" is utter tomfollery of the most dangerous sort.

The Brits were never "in" the economic mechanism so talking bout "getting out" is/was acceptable to a great many.

So, now, that great many must learn the hard way ...

 

The WTO rules will not bring the eminent disaster to the UK.

What will do that is the fact that the UK will no longer have immediate access to markets in the EU. Which is/was the largest and easiest market for them to access*.

That fact has already bitten into unemployment in the UK and from here on out - as the EU recuperates economically - it will continue its economic flat-lining.

And the Brits should be happy that such is the case. Because not flat-lining leaves only one other direction ...

*Worse yet is the fact that the UK had a damn fine hold on the EU market for financial services. The bigger banks are moving out and into the EU, and once that happens fully even should the UK ever return banking there will never be the same again.